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Edward Hitchcock’s Pre-Darwinian (1840) “Tree of Life”

Overview of attention for article published in Journal of the History of Biology, September 2008
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About this Attention Score

  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (63rd percentile)

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15 Wikipedia pages
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1 YouTube creator

Citations

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116 Mendeley
Title
Edward Hitchcock’s Pre-Darwinian (1840) “Tree of Life”
Published in
Journal of the History of Biology, September 2008
DOI 10.1007/s10739-008-9163-y
Pubmed ID
Authors

J. David Archibald

Abstract

The "tree of life" iconography, representing the history of life, dates from at least the latter half of the 18th century, but evolution as the mechanism providing this bifurcating history of life did not appear until the early 19th century. There was also a shift from the straight line, scala naturae view of change in nature to a more bifurcating or tree-like view. Throughout the 19th century authors presented tree-like diagrams, some regarding the Deity as the mechanism of change while others argued for evolution. Straight-line or anagenetic evolution and bifurcating or cladogenetic evolution are known in biology today, but are often misrepresented in popular culture, especially with anagenesis being confounded with scala naturae. Although well known in the mid 19th century, the geologist Edward Hitchcock has been forgotten as an early, if not the first author to publish a paleontologically based "tree of life" beginning in 1840 in the first edition of his popular general geology text Elementary Geology. At least 31 editions were published and those between 1840 and 1859 had this "paleontological chart" showing two trees, one for fossil and living plants and another for animals set within a context of geological time. Although the chart did not vary in later editions, the text explaining the chart did change to reflect newer ideas in paleontology and geology. Whereas Lamarck, Chambers, Bronn, Darwin, and Haeckel saw some form of transmutation as the mechanism that created their "trees of life," Hitchcock, like his contemporaries Agassiz and Miller, who also produced "trees of life," saw a deity as the agent of change. Through each edition of his book Hitchcock denounced the newer transmutationist hypotheses of Lamarck, then Chambers, and finally Darwin in an 1860 edition that no longer presented his tree-like "paleontological chart."

Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 116 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 7 6%
United Kingdom 2 2%
Portugal 1 <1%
Brazil 1 <1%
Turkey 1 <1%
Argentina 1 <1%
Chile 1 <1%
Unknown 102 88%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 33 28%
Student > Ph. D. Student 19 16%
Student > Bachelor 12 10%
Professor > Associate Professor 10 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 8 7%
Other 23 20%
Unknown 11 9%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 63 54%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 21 18%
Social Sciences 4 3%
Arts and Humanities 4 3%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 4 3%
Other 6 5%
Unknown 14 12%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 January 2024.
All research outputs
#7,345,484
of 23,151,189 outputs
Outputs from Journal of the History of Biology
#171
of 485 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#30,489
of 85,869 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of the History of Biology
#1
of 2 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,151,189 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 67th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 485 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 63% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 85,869 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 63% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 2 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them